Attorneys for the state of California have filed a 400-page document with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, describing two dozen serious flaws with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository plan. These follow on the heels of Nevada's own 229-count objection.

I'm sure I could come up with hundreds of serious flaws, too, and so can you. The Yucca Mountain plan stinks, no doubt about it.

Nevertheless, both of these states' complaints are half-measures at best, and in the case of California (where the author's lives), the absurdity of the attorneys' claims in the face of their own actions -- or rather, LACK OF ACTION -- against California's operating nukes is, to say the least, baffling. To say they seem to have blinders on isn't nearly good enough. They seem to have erected a lead shield to protect themselves from grasping -- and then acting on -- the facts. Our nuclear power plants need to be closed -- not tomorrow, but immediately. Yesterday would have been better, but today will have to do. Waiting until tomorrow could be tragic, and in any case, will add additional costs to the problems these plants will leave us, no matter when -- or why -- we close them.

But somehow, despite California's many objections to Yucca Mountain, those same attorneys for the state evidently cannot see that creating additional radioactive waste on a daily basis with no solution in sight is foolhardy at best.

Such myopia should be called what it REALLY is: Criminal Negligence.

The root reason the waste problem isn't solved is technical. Since radioactive emissions are strong enough to destroy ANY container (1) , the "technical" problem will NEVER be solved. New alloys, new crystal structures, microbes that eat radioactive waste, vitrification -- all worthless (2). Rocketing the waste into space, subduction zones in the sea, deep holes -- won't work either (3).

Every day, there is more waste, more radioactive pollution, such as tritium, which is killing our citizens, and more of the "ignoble seven" whose daughter products include noble gases, which are freely released by nuclear power plants in copious quantities (4).

These attorneys seem to have missed the elephant thrashing about in the livingroom. The plants need to be closed NOW. They are old, corroded, embrittled, dilapidated and their employees have repeatedly abdicated their responsibilities, from proper training (5) to doing their fire rounds (6), to numerous problems with top management, and so on.

Every day the plants run, they increase the total risk, the total cost, the immediate risk, and the immediate cost -- costs in terms of health effects around the plants, and delayed costs from accidents or just from fuel storage. Even if we stop making nuclear waste, every movement of the fuel entails enormous risk. And there will be tens of thousands of shipments from all around the country.

A really safe transport of nuclear waste is impossible and any transportation is a big production. Consider all the bridges that have to be strengthened, the potholes that have to be filled, the roads that have to be blocked off as the caravan passes, the staggering number of caravans that will be needed. Each shipping container will hold "only" about 15 tons of spent fuel. With more than 2,500 tons -- 5,000,000 pounds -- of waste (of which any millionth of a gram will poison you fatally) already created in California alone, it will take decades to do anything with the waste. But what? And how? And where? Lawyers don't know, because scientists don't know.

Each trip is a terrorist's best friend and a sane person's worst nightmare. The lawyers seem to have grasped that, at least somewhat.

But what are we left with? Does anyone in California remember Bande Ache? I don't think so, because years afterwards, our nuclear waste is still piled along the coast, and those people charged with protecting it either have no idea it's their responsibility, or have abdicated that responsibility utterly.

Does the San Clemente fire department think it is equipped to deal with tsunami-busted dry casks, a permanent evacuation of thousands of square miles, mass deaths, and a meltdown or two to go with it -- or Genpatsu-Shinsai (the same thing, but starting with an earthquake instead of a tsunami)? If so, they are sadly mistaken.

The utility spokespeople tell the public, the press, and even the NRC that dry casks are safe, knowing that they (the plant employees) are safe from investigation for lying (7). The NRC will barely study the plans at all, won't inspect the casks before use (hardly, anyway), and won't study the actual construction work records whatsoever. So the utilities all say their casks are safe, but any fool who ever studied engineering (or explosives) for more than a day can tell you that's just wrong. In reality, no dry cask is safe -- not one. And nearly every site's casks are different, for no apparent reason. Why are Diablo Canyon's spent fuel rods stacked vertically, and San Onofre's horizontally? Whim? Real estate issues? Earthquake issues?

And there is every reason to fear each ADDITIONAL dry cask. Complacency is a common cause of accidents.

The storage casks are designed to do one thing well (and I doubt they can even do that), which is to sit in one place for up to 100 years, or 20 years -- depends on who you ask (and who you believe).

The proposed shipping casks aren't designed to take ANY significant stress. The fire retention standards are way too low (as proven in the Baltimore train tunnel fire), the load-drop or crush protection is equally inadequate (as proven in the Minnesota bridge collapse, et al).

Splitting the atom is very, very costly.

In fact, the only reason anyone would keep these plants open is because "experts" from places like LLNL are brought in every so often to tell the Energy Commission these plants are safe. These experts are not vetted -- their opinions are not presented in public (they are given in private to, say, Governor Schwarzenegger, or to individuals on the California Energy Commission).

Such experts, of course, now form the heart of the upcoming Obama administration's energy policy.

(1) For a chart of energy levels, see page 9 of my book The Code Killers.(2) There are seven long-lived fission daughter products which are sure to cause problems (along with THEIR daughters). See page 18 of The Code Killers for a list of "the ignoble seven."(3) The Yucca Mtn team was charged with finding any other solution they thought was better. They were NOT limited to thinking about Yucca Mountain. These other choices were eliminated for various reasons, mainly unpredictability (for space-based disposal, reliability was especially a problem, but then, so was money, technical issues, the record of failure, etc. etc.).(4) See the glossary of The Code Killers for various isotopes, such as Cerium-144 and others, that are manufactured and sometimes (if not always) released by nuclear power plants in large quantities. The "ignoble seven" are: Technetium-99, Tin-126, Selenium-79, Zirconium-93, Cesium-135, Palladium-107, and Iodine-129. All have half-lives > 200,000 years.(5) After dropping a crane in 2001, San Onofre had to completely retrain virtually everyone in the place who had any chance of ever being involved in a lift. I heard (from a plant worker) that it cost them about 4,000,000 dollars, including all the new strapping, I-beams, hooks, etc. they also had to buy after they dropped a rented crane.(6) A recent news item reported that for four years, such records were falsified. Numerous other incidents, including threats by armed ex-employees, nearby airplane crashes, etc. etc. should also serve as a warning to all.(7) "Statements made by the public affairs officer of a NRC licensee are not regulated activities. Therefore, the veracity of such statements will not be investigated by the NRC." Letter to the author from the NRC, received March 30th, 2002.

>Begin forwarded message:>>>From: MoJo <mollypj@yahoo.com>>>Date: December 29, 2008 3:00:52 PM EST>>To: HD-Global <hd-g@hopedance.net>>>Subject: [NukeNet] California Says Yucca Poses Threat to People, Resources>>>>NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)>>>>>>http://www.energycentral.com/centers/news/daily/article.cfm?aid=11717362>>>>California Says Yucca Poses Threat to People, Resources >>>>Dec 25 - Las Vegas Review - Journal California is urging federal regulators to turn down the Energy Department's bid to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, charging analysts did not fully study how the plan would affect Death Valley groundwater and the state's transportation networks. >> >>"Proceeding with the project in the manner described by DOE poses a threat to the people, natural resources and environment of California," attorneys said at the outset of a 400-page document filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. >> >>The commission "may not approve DOE's license application unless DOE provides an adequate environmental analysis that analyzes threats to California and how to mitigate them," said the lawyers from the state's Energy Commission and its Department of Justice. >> >>California's objections were made available on Monday, several days after Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto announced Nevada was submitting 229 repository challenges to the NRC on a variety of technical grounds. >> >>There is significance to California raising similar issues before the NRC, according to Joe Strolin, planning division administrator for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. >>"Anytime you have California in the mix it lends a gravitas to an issue," Strolin said Tuesday. >> >>"They are always considered a 600-pound gorilla in the room," Strolin said. "Having them weigh in makes a statement that this is an important issue and not just a Nevada issue. That there are other states, and big states, that have concerns as well." >> >>DOE spokesman Allen Benson said the department was reviewing the contentions and would respond to them within 50 days, as set in NRC regulations. >> >>California attorneys identified 24 issues it wants the NRC to consider as it weighs the safety of the repository plan and decides whether to issue DOE a construction license. >>Many of California's contentions charge the government failed to adequately analyze the transportation impacts from hundreds of radioactive waste shipments that would originate at reactors in the state as well as shipments through California from other states. >> >>"DOE has not conducted sufficient analysis or provided sufficient evidence that such shipments will be conducted in the safest manner," according to the state's complaint. >>Attorneys said DOE took care to fully analyze transportation risks in Nevada "yet it illogically did not do this analysis for the likely transportation routes in the rest of the country, and specifically not in California." >> >>The state's complaint further said DOE has failed to analyze how waste at California reactors could be packaged safely for shipping. >> >>California has four operating reactors, two at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, and two at San Onofre, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. Three other reactors - at San Onofre, the Humboldt Bay station in Eureka and the Rancho Seco plant south of Sacramento are no longer operating but spent fuel is stored there and is awaiting removal. >> >>Collectively, the reactors have generated 2,510 tons of spent nuclear fuel, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. >> >>Other California contentions charge that more analysis is needed to determine how a buildup of contaminants expected to leak from the Yucca site over time would affect aquifers that feed springs in Death Valley. >> >>"Recent scientific work done by the County of Inyo indicates that contaminants entering the carbonate aquifer from the repository could migrate to the springs in Death Valley relatively quickly," attorneys said. >> >>"These springs are the only source of water for the park workers and the approximately 1.25 million annual visitors to Death Valley National Park," attorneys said. >> >>Contact Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760. >> >>(c) 2008 Las Vegas Review - Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved. >>A service of YellowBrix, Inc. >>>>>>"No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime perpetrated by man. The idea that a civilization could sustain itself on such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economical affairs of man as if people did not matter at all." -- E. F. Schumacher �Small is Beautiful�>> >>Molly P Johnson>>Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility www.a4nr.org>>H.O.M.E. (Healing Ourselves & Mother Earth) www.h-o-m-e.org>>Grandmothers for Peace www.grandmothersforepeace.org>> >> >>>>_______________________________________________________________________>>Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/>>Change your settings at:>>http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net>>NukeNet messages are publicly archived here: http://mail.energyjustice.net/pipermail/nukenet_energyjustice.net/

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

This is a resend of my plea to get the Iraqi shoe-throwing reporter released, to fix two small typos. Media With Conscience notes that their in house editor, Emily Mervyn, suggested the same thing last night.

My letter is available online at the MWC web site, where it can be easily translated or forwarded:

Let's start a campaign, right here, right now, to protect the journalist who was beaten and jailed, and now faces as much as seven years in prison and possibly more, for throwing his shoes at our dumb President.

George Bush was being interviewed shortly thereafter, and OVER THE SCREAMS OF THE REPORTER IN THE BACKGROUND, WHO WAS BEING BEATEN, Bush could be heard saying the guy "just wanted to get his name in the paper."

Actually, it was symbolic of a people's utter disgust. The reporter could be heard calling Bush a "dog" and saying it was for: "the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" He had previously been imprisoned by U.S. forces, kidnapped by terrorists, and had lost close family because of Bush's (and Cheney's) phony war.

As a protest, and to demand that the reporter be immediately released without charges, I propose that everyone send an old pair of shoes to George Bush at the White House (1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC 20500). Too expensive for you? Just send him some old shoelaces -- it's practically free and he'll get the message if enough people do it.

It could take millions before he'll get the message. The reporter, Muntadhar al-Zeid, is currently in a hospital in the green zone, with at least a broken arm as I write this, so please send this email to everyone you know, to try to get him released WITHOUT CHARGES.

Throwing your shoes at someone is a potent, ancient, emotionally-charged gesture which means a lot in Iraq -- it means you are lower than the dirt on one's shoe. Don't, of course, try such antics at home!

But Bush SHOULD have the book thrown at him. And the shreds of the Constitution he destroyed, too.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Apparently John Bryson is on Barack Obama's short list for Secretary of Energy (see article by Harvey Wasserman, below, top). And NASA climatologist James Hansen has endorsed nuclear power as a solution to global warming (see letter to him from this author, below, bottom).

With such support, barring a meltdown, the 104 licensed nuclear power plants in this country will still be operating when Obama leaves office. And maybe a few "mini-nukes" will ALSO have been built by then, either for military, or for rich civilian use. And maybe a few new large ones, too, and a score of military propulsion units. Yucca Mountain will keep moving slowly, inexorably forward, unless there is a large earthquake nearby (there are routinely, lots of small ones).

Obama could leave America at least as vulnerable to terrorism, to human error, to unwatched embrittlement, and to unchecked creeping cracks as it is today.

Tritium and a thousand other radioactive isotopes could be pouring into our air, seas, and soil from every reactor that operates today. No change.

All Obama has to do, is do nothing.

And that's not good enough. The world has to undo this mistake; it can't just assume nuclear plants will go away by themselves, run out of raw materials or be shut down for cost reasons. NO. It won't work that way. They'll keep them going with toilet paper and spit and "recycled" military weapons -- thorium, anything -- until something awful happens.

Nuclear reactors employ a lot of union workers. Each of these workers -- every one of them, or they'd quit -- thinks radiation isn't so dangerous. Government and industry wouldn't lie to them to make a buck off their misery, they think. They don't know any better. They believe what they want to believe, to preserve the cocoon of self-confidence, and there's always someone "qualified" (a Health Physics professional, usually) to tell them it's safe -- to tell them it might even be good for them. To tell them everything is dangerous. Crossing the street is dangerous.

So Obama will have no trouble keeping the nuclear power plants open, if that's what he really wants. And there ARE more operating civilian nuclear power plants in his home state than in any other state in the nation.

Nevertheless, by his near-utter silence on the issue during the campaign, Obama practically single-handedly HAS killed the "Nuclear Renaissance," which is withering on the vine these days (but by no means is it dead). Was this just good politics, or what? We'll see.

It's certainly good to watch one multi-billion dollar nuclear project after another around the world falter, as has been happening, but it's not nearly enough, and perhaps is more due to the financial -- pardon the term -- meltdown than to anything else. We need to close the operating nukes -- all of them. Obama can take office with them already closed. Nuclear power produces an unreliable 1/5th of our (U.S.) electricity, about 7% of our total energy needs -- we can close them all and quickly replace them with wind power, peaking power -- ANYTHING.

But of course, it won't happen.

Unless there's a meltdown.

And that's not all that unlikely, when you think about it. With 104 nuclear power plants, most of them many decades old, with the entire NRC focused on trying to issue as many preliminary site licenses as possible before Bush leaves office, with "self-regulation" rampant throughout the nuclear industry, with constant demand for maximum power, with cost pressures forcing fix-on-fail for everything not called a "critical" part according to some arcane NRC regulation, with deadly dry casks popping up all over the country and then being forgotten about while they multiply -- and multiply their dangers -- with spent fuel pools full, even as some of the fuel is being offloaded into the even-more-deadly dry casks, a meltdown -- or something worse -- is not unlikely. It's not too late to impeach George Bush for not shutting the nukes down, for Dick Cheney's secret pro-nuke energy plan, for torture, for the million dead from the War on Truth, or for complacency in the face of imminent threats to the national security.

Finding the right person for Secretary of Energy is certainly one of the most important tasks Obama faces right now. Bryson doesn't fit the bill, but be warned: In a letter to this author, Harvey Wasserman stated, "the rest of the list I've been seeing isn't all that great."

============================================================My pick of Secretary of Energy would be Harvey Wasserman:============================================================

At 02:06 AM 12/7/2008 -0500, Harvey Wasserman wrote:

>John "Nuke Bailout" Bryson must NOT be Secretary of Energy>December 6, 2008

By Harvey Wasserman

>Among the names on the apparent short list for Barack Obama's all-important choice as Secretary of Energy is that of John Bryson, former head of Southern California Edison. >>As the embodiment of greenwashed corporate piracy and radioactive public bailouts, Bryson's appointment would send a terrible message. >>Bryson is now being hyped as "an advocate of hybrid cars." No doubt he is reinventing his image. On a personal basis, he may be the finest of individuals. >>But John Bryson will forever epitomize the bailout of the nuke power industry and the horrific catastrophe of electric utility deregulation, including the contrived energy crisis that cost Californians tens of billions of dollars and allowed them to be robbed by the disgraced Enron. >>Early in his career, Bryson helped found the Natural Resources Defense Council. Under Jerry Brown he headed the California Public Utilities Commission, where he played a role in the installation of some 17,000 windmills. He also sold his soul---and much of California's---to the nuke power industry. >>When Bryson left the CPUC to head the huge Southern California Edison utility company, many heralded the switch as an eco-triumph. But in the early 1990s, California's green community proposed a pioneer renewable construction project that would have provided the state with some 600 megawatts of Solartopian power free from fossil and nuclear fuels. >>Bryson attacked, falsely charging that the power was unnecessary and expensive. In defense of the state's four reactors, all sited near earthquake faults, he used Edison's huge legal and political resources to kill the proposed renewable energy bank. >>With all those windmills and solar panels safely buried, Bryson drafted AB1890, the catastrophic deregulation law that opened the door for Enron. >>AB1890 allowed SoCalEd and Pacific Gas & Electric to recoup billions in nuke construction cost overruns. Rushed through the legislature under intense pressure from Bryson's lobbyists, the bill overrode years of citizen opposition and forced ratepayers to eat the utilities' radioactive mistakes. >>AB 1890's chief public advocate became a Bryson disciple named Ralph Cavanagh, who unfailingly flouted his "green" credentials during radio debates (a few of them with me). >>Cavanagh and SoCalEd paved the way for corporate piracy on a gargantuan scale. They argued that the state's expensive, uncompetitive reactors could not stand in the market place. Their billions in "stranded costs" must therefore be absorbed by the ratepayers to pave the way for "true competition" that would somehow "lower rates." >>Bryson then sat back and watched as Enron selectively withheld power and gamed the de-regulated grid, driving thousands of businesses into bankruptcy and soaking the state's ratepayers for tens of billions of dollars. >>AB1890 passed with Republican Pete Wilson in the governor's mansion. But the crisis broke on Democrat Gray Davis. A close Bryson associate, Davis failed to stand up to SoCalEd and Enron's price gouging. Public outrage opened the door to the recall that led to Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming governor. >>Bryson's seminal pro-nuclear, anti-ratepayer role at SoCalEd stands as a monument to the power of greenwashing. From California the craze to deregulate electric utilities spread to two dozen states. In many of them, the idea of a marketplace in electricity was merely a cover used to scam billions in cost overruns at uncompetitive nuke plants. (In Ohio alone, the take exceeded $9 billion) These "stranded costs" then disappeared from utility balance sheets, giving the illusion that their bloated, dangerous and inefficient reactors were somehow paying for themselves. >>Some of the same utilities that argued then for these stranded cost handouts on the grounds that their nuke plants could not compete are now demanding loan guarantees to build still more reactors on the grounds that they are somehow "cheap." >>However much he may wish to greenwash his image, John Bryson has never come clean about what he did to delay renewables and bankrupt ratepayers. >>Long gone from Southern California Edison, Bryson's ascent to head the DOE would send a disastrous signal to those who are genuinely committed to a post fossil/nuclear future. It would say that somehow an extremely powerful executive who took very destructive steps to delay the green revolution and support nuke power is now the one to lead us to Solartopia. >>There are other candidates to head the DOE who have long histories of genuine support for the renewables revolution on which the future of this country so thoroughly depends. >>In an age where green-powered self-sufficiency is an absolute necessity, John Bryson is unfit to be Secretary of Energy. >>-->Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org. The first Solartopian dance video is now at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x-0Us8szXE .

======================================================Letter to James Hansen, NASA scientists======================================================

Subject: I saw you speak at the Int't Platform Assoc meeting in DC, approx. 1984

December 6th, 2008

Dear Sir,

I saw you speak there, and Dr. Heimlich, and Tom Clancy, and many others also, that year.

You sounded reasonable and scientific, you had good graphics to present your data (which always impresses me), and since then, I've noticed global warming has only continued to get worse, just as you predicted. And the pointers to human activity have only gotten stronger, just as you predicted.

But what's this I hear, that you think nuclear power might be a solution?!? For shame! Forsooth, do look at my new book on the subject, called THE CODE KILLERS: AN EXPOSE, available for free download as a pdf or I'll be happy to send you a printed copy at no charge:

Are you the scientist who can refute it? If you think so, please do, but if not, then how do you know that 4th generation nukes (which are really 1st or 2nd generation nukes, reworked) are going to solve anything? Do you have a solution to the waste problem? If so, I'm sure I'd have heard that James Hansen has solved the nuclear waste problem! But that didn't happen, and it won't (see my graphic on page 9, based on a NASA graphic but greatly enhanced, to review why it CAN'T happen -- because no containment is stronger than a radioactive decay). And besides, surely you know too, that there is too much debris in orbit around the earth to allow "deep space" or sun-deposited nuclear waste, even if the cost could be brought down by several orders of magnitude to make it worth it.

And that waste is HOT, Sir, hot. How can that solve global warming? Consider all the heat a reactor puts out. How can that help, when there are alternatives that do not produce so much heat per watt of delivered electricity? Aren't those going to be the best solutions (such as Atmospheric Vortex Engines, which can use waste heat, and in any event, don't actually produce any heat at all)?

I implore you, Sir: Don't support jumping into the fire to escape the frying pan! America can and must do better.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

The letter shown below was sent, along with copies of my new book, to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. All of the members of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality were sent a copy, and I will try to send copies to the rest of the Energy and Commerce Committee soon. If you have an representative on the committee, please contact them and ask them to read my book -- and thank you in advance!

I have also been sending copies to various activist's organizations around the world, as time and money permits. In the next few weeks I plan to send copies to every state governor in the nation.

Sincerely,

Ace HoffmanCarlsbad, CA

===========================================================Letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee members:===========================================================

To: Energy and Commerce Committee members and staffSubject: A reference book on nuclear issues, published Fall 2008

December 3rd, 2008

Dear Congressperson ,

America cannot move forward with a logical energy policy as long as our leaders make statements such as:

"Italy should keep its nuclear waste and not send it to Utah because any country that is smart enough to develop nuclear power should be able to deal with its waste problem."

That quote (approximately) is from Jim Matheson's web site. It's true enough, as far as it goes, but what he doesn't say is that America isn't smart enough to solve the waste problem, either. And it's not that we haven't tried. And it's not that we're not smart. It's that the problem is "intractable."

No container can be built which can withstand a radioactive decay. (See page 9 of my book for the necessary energy comparisons.) No microbe will be genetically modified to "digest radioactive waste" and thereby render it harmless. No spot of land on earth -- let alone, in relatively tiny Italy -- is going to be secure enough for the required eons. (See page 18 of my book, for a rare (and very shocking) 1976 diagram showing how long various components of nuclear waste are hazardous.)

Another member of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote on their web page that nuclear waste need not be sent to Yucca Mountain because: "it can be safely stored on site." To make such a claim ignores not only the nature of radioactive decay discussed in the previous paragraph, but also how radiation spreads after an accident (see page 17).

Other committee members write about "safe nuclear power" which is the ultimate oxymoron, or merely toss it into the mix when talking about "non-carbon-emitting sources of energy" as in the phrase, "more solar, wind, hydro, biomass, conservation, and nuclear power, so we can combat global warming." It's nice to hear a concern for the planet, but "nuclear power" does not solve global warming. How can it, with so many energy-intensive steps (as shown on page 12 of my book)? How can it, with so many medical consequences -- the costs of which MUST be charged to the proper source?

Even if the courts won't allow reparations for deaths and injuries caused by most nuclear fallout or nuclear waste, that does not mean there is no link -- and it doesn't even mean a statistically significant relationship was not established. When such "weak links" are calculated for entire populations instead of for individuals, they can (and often do) represent a terrible cost to society. Indeed, that is one of the main reasons we have local, state, and national laws to prevent dumping of industrial waste, or even just pouring your used car oil down the drain. Because it all adds up (see page 30 for a discussion of the costs of nuclear power).

It is my hope that the enclosed book will be shared with ALL your staff members. These issues are vital to all Americans, and every member of each of your staffs is, in essence, a senior team member for America's energy policy. Citizens have nowhere else to turn.

Scores of activists have already read this book. Hundreds have downloaded it from my personal home page ( www.acehoffman.org ). Even though it has only been available for a few weeks, many highly-qualified medical doctors and scientists have also read it. The information is VERY accurate. Of course it still has embarrassing typos -- and I apologize for any mistakes, take full blame, and promise to continue to perfect and correct the document, as needed.

However, the facts presented in this book should lead you to an overwhelming conclusion, and I cannot foresee how any slight error could ever change that.

We were the nation that took the wrong first steps into the nuclear age. If it can be said at all that The Bomb ended one war, it just as surely must be said that it started another one, which was at least as devastating, and which has not yet ended. And which wasn't COLD, any more than "Cold Pasteurization" is cold (it's not; it's a radioactive process, which, by any reasonable definition, is HOT).

To minimize the effect of human error, terrorism, so-called "acts of God" or anything else, we have no choice but to turn away from nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Not to do so is to ignore logic, science, and past experience.